I was about to roll out a pie crust the other day when I stared down at a half dollar size hole in the middle of my pastry cloth. “Time to get a new one,” I begrudgingly thought. Then I realized that after 45 years, the pastry cloth had earned its retirement.

Shortly after, I was visiting friends in a large city and stopped in an upscale kitchen equipment store that fills two floors of a gracious old home. After checking various locations for pastry cloths, the young clerk informed me that, “We don’t have those things.”

The next week my husband was at our local Fleet Farm picking up 50 pound sacks of animal feed. He also brought home a pastry cloth that he readily found in their kitchen aisle.

With the holidays approaching, my new $2.99 pastry cloth will begin work soon. I will enjoy using it as I have heeded a piece of pie making advice from Julia Child. In one of her mid-century TV shows, she declared that many people don’t want to buy a big bucket of lard just to make a few pie crusts. “You can produce a decent pie crust,” she intoned, “by using a pie crust mix and adding two tablespoons of butter.” Ever since, I have produced good pie crusts with a 69¢ box of Jiffy Mix and two tablespoons of butter. And I don’t have stockpiles of lard around for which I have no other use. I am not into deep frying turkeys.

Of course, I could buy the lard and put the remains of the bucket in the Tooley Cafe. The raccoons would love me.

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5 Comments for this entry

I’m glad to know where I can get a new pastry cloth. I have my mom’s along with a board my dad rigged up so the cloth snaps on tight with elastic. The last couple Christmas cookie sessions have made me wonder what I was going to do when the cloth disintegrated!
Thanks, Mary.

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The Suitcase Lady Blog is now in its thirteenth year. I am obviously a believer in these words from E. B. White. "We should all do what, in the long run, gives us joy, even if it is only picking grapes or sorting the laundry." Thank you for reading the writing that I delight in doing.